New here, just want to introduce myself, hope doing it in this thread is O.K

Java, OpenGL and PC games are three of my favourite things, so want to try and make my own 3D Engine for fun etc. and then if able to make a small game from it, well try. I have some experience in Java and OpenGL, hope I don't bother you guys to much with all my Noob questions, ill be asking on this Forum.

Java, OpenGL and PC games are three of my favourite things, so want to try and make my own 3D Engine for fun etc. and then if able to make a small game from it, well try.

The fun comes from creating -and finishing- the game, not from reinventing the wheel and doing what legions of other people have done, which is focus on the tech. After having been stuck in that "engine building" bottomless pit myself for years I implore you; the first time you restart from scratch to make things better, switch to working on a game in stead of an engine. I waited until I was ready to restart for the fifth time, 4 years of my life were 'lost' without any actual game to show for it.

Me (the programmer) and my friend (who is a artists) are thinking of making a game, sandbox type game, NOT like minecraft of course,but a sandbox like type game, because it saves time on level design, well then again creating a good sandbox might be more difficultthan normal linear level design but we feel it might require less level assets, and we aren't experienced level designers.

But I would like to make the game mod-able, how does one make it mod-able game, is it about exposing certain functionality of your gameor just going full open-source type mode.

Me (the programmer) and my friend (who is a artists) are thinking of making a game, sandbox type game, NOT like minecraft of course,but a sandbox like type game, because it saves time on level design, well then again creating a good sandbox might be more difficultthan normal linear level design but we feel it might require less level assets, and we aren't experienced level designers.

But I would like to make the game mod-able, how does one make it mod-able game, is it about exposing certain functionality of your gameor just going full open-source type mode.

Thats some problems you ont even need to start thinking about, most people will not care about modding if your game sucs.Minecraft is not made to be modded, but its so populair, that people just started to decompile his code and making changes.During the design of your game you can keep in mind you want it to be modded, so you could read everythign from data (xml?) files, wich can be altered by other users.

Sandbox does not mean random generated.Random terrain generation is much (very very much) harder then designing a level by hand, so dont do it because you think its easyer.

I wouldn't even dream about creating a moddable game until you actually have a few games under your belt. And by then you'll probably have a very good idea on how to do that.

There is a huge problem with generated worlds too: they're often very dull and riddled with impossibilities, no matter how good you make the generator. People have used the word "soulless" and that describes it very well. Minecraft is both an example of and an exception to that rule; most worlds you generate are pretty useless, you actually need to go to minecraftforum.net and look at the feeds thread to get ones that are by chance fun to use.

The fun comes from creating -and finishing- the game, not from reinventing the wheel

It's also fun to learn the underlying things which you mean by reinventing the wheel.

Hence my comment to shift focus after restarting once I'm not saying to not do it, just to not keep going for too long.

I've been reinventing the wheel for more than a year (as long as I've been programming), and I'm still enjoying programming.Getting it right is fun. You get a good sense of achievement.Getting it wrong is not so fun, but makes you a better debugger so you can have more fun later.

The fun comes from creating -and finishing- the game, not from reinventing the wheel and doing what legions of other people have done, which is focus on the tech. After having been stuck in that "engine building" bottomless pit myself for years I implore you; the first time you restart from scratch to make things better, switch to working on a game in stead of an engine. I waited until I was ready to restart for the fifth time, 4 years of my life were 'lost' without any actual game to show for it.

At first, each person is different and there are a few developers including me who have taken pleasure in reinventing the wheel, sometimes only for fun, sometimes for pedagogical purposes, maybe for other reasons. There are still tons of things to improve in existing engines, only a very few support multiple kinds of culling (basic frustum culling is often supported), I have been unable to find even one engine with a specific handling of native memory, a very few support some kind of spatial subdivision... However, I understand your complaint. Writing an engine may require years of work, it's risky, it can become demotivating and you have almost no chance to make something better than existing solutions except if you're a genius and if you have a lot of time. You didn't lose 4 years of your life, you learnt a lot of things, didn't you? I would rather say that we should stop when there's no fun, it's true for an engine or a game. Finally, some of my pretty "wheels" are in Ardor3D and JMonkeyEngine. I still recommend to know from where you start and where you can go. Go where you find some fun. Don't spend tons of years in writing engines if you prefer making a complete game. If you like writing engines, consider contributing to existing ones. I wrote my own engine several years ago, I have no regret, the alpha version of my "game" still uses it. Writing its own engine can be a step.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org